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"Somehow, these people that cared about the laundry only cared about the laundry. They didn't care about the children!...I thought they were crazy. I said, 'these people have lost their minds.'"

"In what may be the ultimate in vanity plates, House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) is hoping to steer some $2 million to a building project at the City College of New York that will house — wait for it — not one, not two, but three construction projects bearing the gravelly voiced lawmaker’s name." The project will reportedly include: the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service, the Rangel Conference Center, the Charles Rangel Library, and a “well-furnished office” for the lawmaker.

A national gathering of prominent black pastors deserves praise for confronting the AIDS crisis in the African-American community, but also merits criticism for counting on government to provide solutions.

According to the most recent statistics, blacks make up 49% of new HIV diagnoses, though only 13.5% of the overall population. Widely admired Bishop T.D. Jakes of Dallas wants to tie this epidemic to politics and to the presidential campaign of 2008. “We can hold our politicians accountable,” he says. “Now is the time for the church to give a clarion call to government that this is one of the issues high on our radar screen.”

Wouldn’t the church do better to issue that “clarion call” to its own members to alter intimate behavior, rather than relying on federal protection against a disease spread almost entirely through sex or drugs? Holding politicians “accountable” sounds like a way to let individuals feel less responsible for consequences of their own actions. 

A prominent Dallas minister told his congregation that if they wanted to elect a Christian to the White House, Republican Mitt Romney wasn't qualified.

Dr. Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, said Mormonism is a false religion and that Mr. Romney was not a Christian.

"Mitt Romney is a Mormon, and don't let anybody tell you otherwise," Dr. Jeffress said in a sermon on Sept. 30. "Even though he talks about Jesus as his Lord and savior, he is not a Christian. Mormonism is not Christianity. Mormonism is a cult."

Yesterday I joined by Rep. Paul Ryan and other members of the Budget Committee and the Republican Study Committee to announce the creation of the “Budget Boondoggle Award”.  This prestigious honor is reserved only for the most outrageous examples of misuse of taxpayer dollars, unnecessary earmarks, and duplicative and ineffective programs across the Federal system.

In my opinion these are some of the most glaring examples:

The Award for the Most Duplicative, Ineffective, and Inappropriate Programs

Technological Corporate Welfare (Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Bill).

• The Advanced Technology Program [ATP] is recognized as one of the worst forms of corporate welfare, and the President has proposed to eliminate it.
• As of 2005, 39 Fortune 500 companies had received a total of $732 million in ATP subsidies, with IBM alone receiving $127 million.
• One survey showed that 65 percent of ATP applicants did not even bother trying to procure private funding before lining up at the “Federal trough.”
• Although authorizing legislation terminates the program, this appropriations bill still funds it at $93 million for fiscal year 2008.

The Award for Most Government Waste

More FEMA Funds Squandered (Homeland Security Appropriations Bill).

•  FEMA spent $3.5 million to melt $24 million worth of ice it had purchased but did not need – for an “ice-capade” totaling $27.5 million.
• Fraudulent FEMA payments cited by the Government Accountability Office (GAO)include:      

1. $17 million in rental assistance paid to individuals to whom FEMA had already provided free housing in trailers or apartments;
2. $20 million in duplicate payments to thousands of individuals who claimed damages to the same property from both Hurricanes Katrina and Rita;
3. Housing to 10 individuals in apartments in Plano, TX, while these individuals received $46,000 to cover out-of-pocket housing expenses.

Stay tuned for more examples of waste, fraud, and abuse of your tax dollars.

The 11th Commandment was a term created by the Chairman of the California Republican Party, Gaylord Parkinson in 1966. Reagan adopted it to mean that one Republican did not attack another Republican’s patriotism, fidelity or sobriety. Politicians like Giuliani hide behind it when criticized by another on issues, which Reagan did plenty against Ford in 1976 and George Bush in 1980.”

Both Rick Perry of Texas and Mark Sanford of South Carolina have shown a solid commitment to keeping taxes and spending burdens low in their states over their entire terms...

Texas governor Rick Perry has kept spending under control better than most governors in this report card...

On fiscal issues, Rick Perry has been a better governor than George W. Bush. Having inherited the office when Bush became president in 2000, he was elected in his own right in a 2002 landslide on a pledge to oppose any new or increased taxes. He has been very disciplined on the spending side: The budget has stayed mainly flat in real per capita terms.

In 2004 Perry proposed a $6 billion property tax cut, with a large cigarette tax hike of $1 per pack to offset the revenue loss. Over the next two years, he also tacked on a brand-new gross receipts tax, which has the potential to discourage business growth in Texas—indeed, gross receipts taxes are widely reviled by economists as an economy-sapping levy.

It was an unnecessary move, too, since the state was rolling in a $4 billion budget surplus. The saving grace is that the tax plan that Perry finally signed into law will result in a net tax cut of nearly $1.5 billion in the first year alone—quite a substantial achievement. Still,  some Texans have rightly been questioning why Perry insisted on tainting his plan with an unneeded tax shift—especially onto the backs of businesses and smokers—when it could have instead been a much larger net tax cut.

Today, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani made news at the Club for Growth 2007 Fall Conference when he unambiguously ruled out an increase in Social Security taxes and declared his previous support for McCain-Feingold a “mistake.”

While Giuliani has frequently stated his general opposition to taxes, he has never declared his opposition to raising Social Security taxes as unabashedly as he did today.  Nor has Giuliani ever addressed his previous support for McCain-Feingold in such a candid manner.  Today, Giuliani said the anti-free speech legislation needed to be reworked and supported removing limits on political contributions while increasing disclosure requirements.